2 What exactly is Amazon looking for
At the end of each interview your interviewer will grade your performance using a standardized feedback form that summarizes the attributes Amazon looks for in a candidate. That form is constantly evolving, but we have listed some of its main components below.
The interviewer will file the notes they took during the interview. This usually includes: the questions they asked, a summary of your answers and any additional impressions they had (e.g. communicated ABC well, weak knowledge of XYZ, etc.).
Your interviewer will then grade you on technical competencies. They will be trying to determine whether you are “raising the bar” or not for each competency they have tested.
In other words, youll need to convince them that you are at least as good as or better than the average current Amazon SDE at the level youre applying for (e.g. SDE III).
The exact technical competencies youll be evaluated against vary by role. But here are some common ones for SDE roles:
Your interviewer will also grade you on Amazons 16 Leadership Principles and assess whether youre “raising the bar” for those too. As mentioned above each interviewer is given two or three Leadership Principles to grill you on. Here are some of the most commonly tested principles for SDE roles:
Finally, each interviewer will file an overall recommendation into the system. The different options are along the lines of: “Strong hire”, “Hire”, “No hire”, “Strong no hire”.
Example questions
Here at IGotAnOffer, we believe in data-driven interview preparation and have used Glassdoor data to identify the types of questions that are most frequently asked at Amazon.
For coding interviews, weve broken down the questions youll be asked into subcategories (e.g. Arrays / Strings , Graphs / Trees , etc.), so that you can prioritize the most common ones in your preparation.
In addition, weve also listed 10 system design and 40+ behavioral questions asked at Amazon below. Lets start with coding questions.
1 Learn about Amazon’s culture
Most candidates fail to do this. But before investing tons of time preparing for an interview at Amazon, you should take some time to make sure its actually the right company for you.
Amazon is prestigious and its tempting to assume that you should apply, without considering things more carefully. But, its important to remember that the prestige of a job (by itself) wont make you happy in your day-to-day work. Its the type of work and the people you work with that will.
If you know engineers who work at Amazon or used to work there, talk to them to understand what the culture is like. The Leadership Principles we discussed above can give you a sense of what to expect, but theres no replacement for a conversation with an insider.
We would also recommend reading the following resources:
3 What happens behind the scenes
Your recruiter is leading the process and taking you from one stage to the next. Heres what happens at each of the stages described above:
Its also important to note that recruiters and people who refer you have little influence on the overall process. They can help you get an interview at the beginning, but thats about it.